Texas Senate Passes Ban on Proven, Safe Method of Abortion

03.20.17 - (MEDIA ADVISORY) The Texas
Senate gave final approval and passed a measure today which would ban a
safe, medically proven method of ending a pregnancy in the second trimester,
with only a narrow exception for women facing immediate, serious medical risks.

The Center for Reproductive Rights
called upon the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee to reject the
measure (SB415) in a letter sent last month, stating the measure “is
clearly unconstitutional and will endanger the health of Texans by preventing
physicians in the state from exercising their best medical judgment in caring
for their patients.”

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed
a similar measure into law earlier this year even though bans of this nature
face strong opposition. West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D) vetoed a similar measure last year while similar laws
in Louisiana,
Kansas and Oklahoma have not taken effect due to challenges
brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The ACLU has also
successfully blocked a similar ban in Alabama.

“Texas politicians can’t
seem to take a hint, continuing to advance insulting and unconstitutional
restrictions on a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion,” said Amanda Allen,
Senior State Legislative Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Texas politicians need to abandon their crusade against women’s dignity and
focus on measures that actually improve the lives and health of women and their
families.”

Texas is considering more than 40
measures this legislative session which would restrict a woman’s access to safe
and legal abortion. For instance, the Texas Senate passed a measure last
week (SB 8) which would ban a medical procedure already banned by federal law
and duplicates federal law’s prohibitions on selling fetal tissue. The bill
would also ban women who have ended their pregnancies from making the
compassionate choice of donating fetal tissue. By banning fetal tissue donation
just for women who have had abortions --and not other patients--the state is
singling out those women to shame them and send a clear message that the state
does not approve of their decision to have an abortion.

The Texas legislature is also
considering multiple measures which double down on regulations finalized
by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) in 2016 forcing Texas
health care providers to bury or cremate embryonic or fetal tissue from abortions,
miscarriage or treatment for ectopic pregnancy–regardless of their patients’
personal wishes or beliefs. The Center for Reproductive Rights is
currently challenging
those regulations, which were first proposed just four days after the U.S.
Supreme Court’s historic Whole
Woman’s Healthv. Hellerstedt
decision in June. A district court blocked
the regulations from taking effect in late January. These politically motivated
regulations are designed to shame and stigmatize women, and cut off access to
reproductive care in direct defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court, which just held
that medically unnecessary restrictions on safe, legal abortion are
unconstitutional.